View All Posts of February 2015

How To Get More Done in a DayThe last couple of weeks haven’t been particularly easy as my husband’s mother has been in hospital. Thankfully, she’s now much better and is back home. But it got me thinking and I realised I hadn’t coped particularly well. I felt as though I was dashing around all the time and was permanently tired (and, I mus...

There seems to be a rash of articles in the press and various writers’ magazines bemoaning the low income that most writers have to exist on. But it still doesn’t seem to put people off wanting to write. And I don’t blame them. But many of our students are more interested in earning a part-time or second income, and this is quite feasibl...

Don’t you just hate it when writers pepper their work with exclamation marks? F Scott Fitzgerald is quoted as saying: “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.” But I must admit that I always have to go through my writing slashing stray exclamations marks, as they do tend to worm their way...

I’m always amazed by the number of would-be writers who say that they never read other people’s work. Apparently, they don’t have time! I don’t believe you can be a writer if you don’t read…anything and everything, omnivorously. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pulp or classical literature; fiction or non-fiction; e-books or pape...